Vote May Block Prison in East L.A.

For the Mothers of East Los Angeles, Friday was a day to celebrate an apparent victory in a six-year battle to keep a proposed state prison out of their community.

In Sacramento, a legislative conference committee working on the state budget voted late Thursday to stop the construction of a 1,450-bed state prison in the southeast corner of downtown Los Angeles. The controversial project was opposed by the Mothers of East Los Angeles and other groups of Latino activists.

“My heart is bursting with joy,” said Juana Gutierrez, a 59-year-old mother of nine who helped form the Mothers of East Los Angeles in 1985 to fight the prison.

The legislative conference committee voted to transfer $130 million earmarked for the East Los Angeles prison to an alternative site in the San Joaquin Valley city of Madera.

It remained unclear, however, whether Gov. Pete Wilson would go along with the committee’s decision when he is presented with the budget.

Bill Livingstone, the governor’s press secretary, said that while Wilson does not want to build the prison in East Los Angeles if the residents oppose it, the decision “is not that easy.”

“There have been tens of millions of dollars already contractually obligated,” Livingstone said. “He’s not planning to make any decision until the budget is completed and on his desk.”

For Gutierrez and other activists, the prison project had come to symbolize the political weakness of the Latino community. The facility was to be built in an area just west of the Los Angeles River, near 30 schools in East Los Angeles. Such a project, the activists argued, would never have been undertaken near the Westside or other predominantly Anglo communities.

Helped by then-Assemblywoman Gloria Molina, Gutierrez and about 50 other women, mostly housewives, organized. They lobbied public officials and held dozens of protests rallies against the prison.

The group has since worked on other issues, including opposition to a toxic waste incinerator in nearby Vernon.

“It (the prison) was the motive for the people of East Los Angeles to learn to defend ourselves,” Gutierrez said in Spanish. “Now we’re fighting for much more. We’re fighting against all the injustice that comes our way.”

Most elected Latino officials also opposed the project, including state Sen. Art Torres (D-Los Angeles) and Assemblywoman Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-Los Angeles).

The Mothers of East Los Angeles have scheduled a Mass for 7 a.m. Sunday at a Boyle Heights church to give thanks and to pray that the governor takes their side.